On March 30, 2024, INEC published the parties’ names and their candidates for the September 21 governorship election in Edo state. INEC published the names of 17 parties and their governorship and deputy governorship candidates. They include the Action Alliance (AA), African Action Congress (AAC), Action Democratic Party (ADP), Accord Party (AP), African Democratic Congress (ADC), All Progressives Congress (APC), All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), All People Movement (APM), All Peoples Party (APP), Boot Party (BP), Labour Party (LP), New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), People Redemption Party (PRP), Social Democratic Party (SDP), Young Progressive Party (YPP), and Zenith Labour Party (ZLP).
However, the National Rescue Movement (NRM) led a peaceful protest at the INEC office in Edo state for omitting their candidate’s name. The NRM party faithful presented a protest letter titled “Protest on non-inclusion of our gubernatorial candidate in the forthcoming Edo State governorship election in September 2024.” The letter was signed by the chairman and secretary of the Edo state NRM chapter.
The CDD War Room can confirm that the National Rescue Movement is not among the parties released by INEC to contest the upcoming governorship election in Edo State. We can also confirm that NRM held its governorship primary election, which saw Dennis Aikoriogie emerge as the party’s consensus candidate. According to the party, the INEC monitoring team from Abuja led by Rakiya Abdullahi Dattijo and Jane Aigba Margret monitored the primary election held in Edo state.
The CDD War Room contacted the INEC headquarters in Abuja, from where the monitoring team was allegedly deployed, and sought to know why the party was omitted from the released list, having met the conditions to conduct their primary elections. All efforts to reach Sam Olumekun, the resident commissioner and chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee at INEC headquarters were unsuccessful at the time of this report.
However, we found a response by Timidi Wariowe, the Edo state INEC head of department, Voter Education and Publicity. He said “the reason the name of the party (NRM) and its governorship candidate didn’t appear was because they did not send their names to INEC headquarters in Abuja.”
“On this issues, what we gathered, was that, there was no letter from the National Working Committee of your party from Abuja. There was no letter from the National Working Committee of NRM from the INEC headquarters from Abuja and that is to say, that your party did not send INEC headquarters the names, the time for the primary and the venue for the primary. So, we cannot go and monitor a primary or maybe letter being sent by the state office, we don’t accept that.”
Wariowe added that “We know that primaries are conducted by the National Working Committee of a party and we only receive correspondences from the National Working Committee of the party and it is done via INEC headquarters to the state office and then, we comply. You said that some persons from the (INEC) state office went and monitor, let me tell you point blank that, those people that went to monitor, they are on their own.
They didn’t get directive form the Resident Electoral Commissioner and also didn’t get directive from INEC headquarters”
ALL WE KNOW
The CDD War Room can confirm that INEC did not publish the name of NRM’s gubernatorial candidate for the September 21 governorship election in Edo state after the party conducted a primary election.
In a response by the Edo state INEC office, they said the party’s National Working Committee failed to communicate to INEC headquarters ahead of the primary and did not send the names of aspirants/candidate to the INEC headquarters. They added that the INEC monitoring team that allegedly came from the Abuja to monitor the primary election were not recognized by the INEC headquarters in Abuja.
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